24-year-old tube player Fidias Panayiotou has become known for his social antics. He had to apologize to the Japanese for his most controversial video.
In the European elections, Cypriot voters shook the country’s political patterns when they sent a 24-year-old to the EU Parliament as an independent candidate Phidias Panayiotou.
Panayiotou is a YouTuber and Tiktok who has become known for his comic antics and pranks that he shares in videos.
When the Cypriot votes had been counted in the European elections, Panayiotou had received almost a fifth of all the votes cast, i.e. 19.4 percent. In the elections, he alone was the third largest “political group” in Cyprus.
– 20 percent! I’m in shock, Panayiotou shouted to his supporters at the victory party in Nicosia.
In the Cypriot media, his success has been interpreted as a message to the ossified political parties that they need to change and that this is a step towards reshaping the political map.
– The parties should take this as a warning that they must modernize and listen to the people, Panayiutou said at his victory celebration.
Of the six seats in Cyprus, the other two went to the conservative party and one seat each to the centrist democrats, communists and ultra-nationalists.
An audience of millions on social media
The son of an Orthodox priest, Fidias Panayiotou is known on social media platforms only by his first name, Fidias. In the elections, he managed to harness his followers to the urn.
When Panayiotou registered for the election in April, he said his goal was to motivate young people to vote, not to get elected, says BBC. He admitted that he himself had never voted and did not know much about the functioning of the EU.
Cypriot political experts talk about the Fidias phenomenon, which was partly reflected in the increase in voter turnout, which rose from 45% in the previous European elections to 58.86%.
According to a door-to-door poll by the Cypriot news site Philanews, Panayiotou received 40 percent of the 18-24-year-old vote and 28 percent of the 25-34-year-old vote.
For example, he has more than 2.6 million followers worldwide on Youtube.
Tubettaja’s most popular feats have been trying to hug a hundred celebrities, including Elon Musk, lying in a coffin for a week and training with Chinese Shaolin warriors.
Last fall, Panayiotou published the video, where he traveled around Japan without paying a single yen. Among other things, he pretended to be sick while traveling with a ticket on a bullet train and skimmed the breakfast bill in a five-star hotel.
Panyiotou eventually apologized for the video, after some followers concluded that his behavior was a crime and Japan Railways began to consider legal action.
AFP